Artist: Minyoung Choi

Curator: Zhao Xiaodan

Hive Center for Contemporary Art is pleased to present the opening of South Korean artist Minyoung Choi’s latest solo exhibition, “Dark Brightness”, featuring 19 of the most recent paintings of the artist. The exhibition will be open on 4 November at Hive Beijing’s exhibition halls B and C. This show is curated by Zhao Xiaodan, and will be on view until 16 December.

Born in 1989 in Seoul, South Korea, Minyoung Choi received her MFA in Painting from Seoul National University and Slade School of Fine Art, respectively, in 2013 and 2017. She now lives and works in London. Her practice embraces elements of folklore, mythology, and religious narratives, all of which manifest themselves in a dreamlike and mesmerising manner in her work. Through her paintings, the artist addresses a moment in time based on a distinct from grand narratives, significantly when her personal perceptions are transformed and arranged by a drapery-like change of light and situations, the weightlessness and detachment from the here and now are emphasised. In her works, Choi often intentionally adopts imagery with powerful symbolic qualities, such as the hare, lynx, eel, etc., which in established cultural contexts embodies the human exploration and reverie for the mysterious and unknown world, serving as an interface into the endless chapters of her painting world.

Yuval Harari summarised, “The truly unique trait of Sapiens is our ability to create and believe fiction.” Choi, who has been immersed in the world of literature over the years, is well aware of such summarisation. In her works, she conceals the trace of narrative by accentuating rituals/ceremonial symbols, especially when introducing the experience of time and space transition and seasonal changes into her works, thereby embedding the experience that enhances the fluctuation of the mind into the canvas. Past memories and present sentiments are intertwined in the seemingly motionless images.

Minyoung Choi is narrating a story about humans in a circulating manner, and what it really imparts is not the darkness but the divine shimmering light emanating from the darkness. If surrealism represents the fragmentation of consciousness and visual conflict, Minyoung Choi removes the boundaries of manifold realities by mixing the imagery of human’s collective experience with dreams. Almost in a symbiotic hypothesis, the artist settles the anxiety, insecurity, fear, and chaotic feelings in a unique approach and establishes complex and distant visceral landscapes.

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Minyoung Choi: A Metaphorical Realm of Interwoven Light, Darkness, and Fantasy